nemomeme's slumberland

Recent gaming

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 19:42:49 GMT

I got to play Polaris last weekend. Me and two others. I've played a couple times before, but only one-shots, and this was likely a one-shot as well - a filler game for when we couldn't get the whole Sorcerer group together. Again, it really made me want to play a longer stint of Polaris with the same ongoing characters. It continues to cement itself as one of my absolute favorite games, in its design, its weight, and in its temperament. We tended to have really short scenes in this session, often choosing to end the scene right after the first conflict and not spending much time in "free play." I suspect if we had it in our mind that we were about to play a five to seven session game, we would not be so quick to go for the throat of the conflicts.

My character, Al' Nair, a Knight of the Order of the Stars, (as all protagonists in Polaris are), has war duties which press upon him, as hoards of demons from the Mistake fall upon the remnant of Southreach. Meanwhile, a fellow knight, Matar, is courting his true love, Geinah. He believes she is true to him but it is clear that is likely not the case, at least not for long. The other protagonist knights wrestle with familial duty and pride.

We'll probably not see these characters again. They were snowflakes, suspended briefly in the air, and now there are none who remember.

The 4E game I'm DM'ing is progressing fairly well. I'm learning a lot, experimenting and trying different things to try to see that everyone has fun. Most of the preparation for the game is relatively easy, but it not a simple thing creating combat encounters that are interesting. Despite running combats that are high-standard to hard each time, I have yet to really threaten any of the PCs. They are tough! And yet making the combats more difficult may potentially put them in a "grind" territory where they last too long. Not an easy balance. Turning the DM duties back over to the reguarl DM after the next session.

I'm playing in a 4E Forgotten Realms mini-campaign that started up last night. My character, Osaiah Dark, is a Tempest Fighter, modeled after Solomon Kane. He's a werewolf/undead hunter. He got to run down and cut loose some stirge-panicked horses from the wagon they were pulling, moments before it went off a cliff. Pretty awesome.

4E: Low Prep

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 01:43:13 GMT

For my last 4E session I had thought about and prepared for what would happen if the player characters ventured further into the swamp they found themselves in. I had also thought about what would happen if they left the swamp and traveled to the Skandik islands they'd been discussing returning to.

But on the morning of game day I recalled that they didn't have enough of the "Hopeblossom" flowers they'd been collecting and that if they elected to leave the swamp that might prove to be a problem later. So I decided that the NPC they would soon rescue would know of two other locations where the Hopeblossoms might be found - a couple islands that were more or less on the way to the Skandik islands they were bound for.

I looked the islands up quickly in the published campaign setting and saw that one of the islands had some ruins and a lot of giant carniverous apes, and the other had something to do with pirates. I dug out my One Bad Egg Apelord pdf and cut and paste 4 different ape statblocks into a Word document. Then I wrote down a thousand XP worth of human stat blocks from the Monster Manual for pirates and jotted down three sentences of what was likely to happen if they landed on either of the islands. That entire process took less than fifteen minutes and I was at least somewhat prepared if they went to either of those islands. The human stats were things I could use straight out of the Monster Manual for any number of situations they might find themselves in.

The previous combats I'd prepped were more or less "set pieces," where I had either a WotC paper map or a dry erase Paizo map already prepared. But if the party ran into either apes or pirates the combat terrain would be made on-the-fly. They ended up going to the pirate island and got into a melee with a group of pirates on the beach. I think they had fun, in part because they absolutely steamrolled the pirates, but the on-the-fly map I set up wasn't nearly as interesting as it could have been. There was a huge swath of difficult terrain soft sand. But there was no compelling reason (like some artillery baddies on the far side) for them to want/have to cross the soft sand. There also weren't any combat goals other than "kill 'em all," which is something I prefer to stay away from with forethought.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how quickly I was able to throw together something in fifteen minutes the morning of game day. And I was also able to improvise a "prevent the mutiny" skill challenge when one of the players decided to get in the face of one of the longboat's mercenary crew-members. 4E is really nice for this.

Tomorrow I'm going to see how many level-appropriate encounter stat-blocks I can put together for 4E in one hour. I'll bet I can do ten. And then I'm pretty much ready for wherever the characters might go. But then I need a second stage where I make up a list of interesting features or combat goals that can be applied where appropriate. Like a dozen of those and then I pick two or three to overlay the stat blocks as needed.

While I enjoyed playing 3E most of the time, I absolutely dreaded the thought of running it. 4E works really well for me on this front. A big part of my interest in and enthusiasm for small-press/indie games has to do with subject matter and play style preferences. But I am realizing than a big part of it was (and is) the low to no-prep than many of them permit.

An Awesome 4E Moment

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 19:31:27 GMT

A couple sessions back in our 4E game, the party cleric rushed to save a badly wounded man hanging from a tree in the swamp. He cut him down and staunched his wounds but was then charged and grabbed by a massive crocodile. The croc held him in his jaws, clamping down on him and dragging him inexorably towards the nearby mire. Lacking strength or athletic skill, the cleric was unable to escape and things did not look good. The rest of the party was otherwise engaged in combat with the goblins that had hung the man in the tree for their entertainment and coaxed the crocodile from the mire towards the helpless victim.

The party swordmage jumped down from a nearby bluff, ran up to the crocodile and used a power called Dimensional Warp, teleporting himself into the cleric's place, swapping locations with him.

I blinked a couple times slowly as the situation dawned on me. "So... now you're in the crocodile's mouth..." "Yup!"

This was a much better situation for the party. The cleric was free to heal or attack other targets without taking opportunity attacks from the croc and the swordmage, being strong and athletic, was much more likely to be able to free himself.

But the awesome was not over.

Immediately after, the croc bit down on the swordmage with his clamping jaws attack triggering the swordmage's daily Frost Backlash power. A burst of cold energy exploded and most of the croc's teeth shattered and fell out. It was still alive, but grievously wounded. It was vanquished soon after and the swordmage was free.

A round later the party warlock took out a raging goblin skullcleaver that was about to coup de grace the party paladin.

The combat encounters I'd run before and since this one have been reasonably fun but this one really stood out.

Berkeley 1968

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:40:38 GMT

I love playing with people who like to think about and then write about their role-playing experiences.

But it's helped me to be even more slothful about doing actual play posts than I might be. Hah! Would that I had that as a legitimate excuse. I've had some fun sessions lately, both as a GM and a player, and have not written about them.

In any case, Christian wrote up an actual play summary of our first Sorcerer session here.

I'll probably add any of my thoughts about the session there. Enough to say here that I had a lot of fun, despite being pretty brain-burnt from GM'ing 4E most of the day just prior.

Colin made a sketch of my character based on an archive photo I found online. I love it!

Brother Love

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:31:03 GMT

The indie group I play with is finally starting up our "Berkeley in '68" game of Sorcerer this coming Sunday. Thought I'd post my character for kicks.

I've played minority race characters in rpgs before but never in a game where race as an issue is likely to be in the foreground. I'm a little concerned about it - I'm no Robert Downey Jr. (who is?), and even his portrayal of an actor playing a Shaft-esque black militant in Tropical Thunder struck some people the wrong way.

I took two terms of Black American History in college, have a black step-mother, and was the only white kid on my little league team growing up, but I still see this as the kind of character I should probably just stay away from. We'll see.

Devin Love (Brother Love)

Humanity: 4
Telltale: Never blinks.
Stamina: 4 Vietnam Vet
Will: 4 Righteous Brother
Lore: 2 Apprentice
Cover: 4 Black Panther Party Revolutionary
Price: Paranoid (-1 to all actions unless character is under attack)
Kicker: Mother's just been arrested on drug charges. Local party apparatus ready to pop.

Back of the Sheet

Lore
Johanne Love: mother, mentor, Creole clairvoyant and voodoo priestess.
North Central Levee; Fremont Weir; El Rico Levee: isolated ley lines, disturbed places of contact.

Cover
Delon Love: brother, hustler, psychedelic drug-dealer.
Huey P. Newton: co-founder and leader of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.
Eldridge Cleaver: Black Panther Party minister of information

Price
Tamira Williams: girlfriend, peace activist, community organizer

Mark Turner: FBI agent, COINTELPRO operative.

***

Born in New Orleans in 1943, Devin Love was raised by his mother Johanne, a Haitian-American voodoo practitioner.

One year ago in the jungles of Vietnam, he killed the master of Atum and bound him using little but his bloody rage and a trick or two he learned from Johanne. Living now in Berkeley, he is an anti-war spokesman, an activist, and a member of the Black Panther Party. Handsome and charismatic, a decorated veteran for peace, Devin is something of a minor celebrity around the campus, something that sometimes goes to his head (Hence, "Brother Love").

Devin is sometimes a helper and sometimes an instigator with respect to his brother Delon who is always in and out of trouble.

His girlfriend Tamira, active in BPP community outreach programs to feed and clothe children and fund free clinics, is a positive and stabilizing influence for Devin.

Atum and some of the more violent and racially exclusive factions of the party are starting to tear at him from the other side.

His mother moved to Berkeley recently. She knows about Atum and does not approve but is teaching Devin to better control both Atum and his anger.

Devin is certain the local party office has been infiltrated by the FBI. He may be paranoid but he may also be right.

***

Demon Name: Atum
Demon Type: Inconspicuous

Telltale: Slight shimmer at certain angles, faint echoes of chanting slaves.

Stamina: 2
Will: 4
Lore: 3
Power: 4

Binding Strength: +2

Desire: Mayhem
Need: Kill and drink blood of small animals, usually birds.

Abilities:

Cloak (Free)
Boost: Will (demagogic persuasion)

Special Damage: Sonics (impossibly loud shouting)
Ranged (for Sonics, 4 meters)

From ancient Egypt,Atum styles himself after an sun deity. His pedigree is considerably lower. He was bound by a Napoleonic soldier/sorcerer in 1798 and had a succession of French masters but was contacted, summoned, and bound by Hồ Chi Minh in Paris in 1923. Hồ Chi Minh ultimtately banished him in favor of a less annoying servant. Atum took up service with a more pliable Việt Minh master who was later throttled to death by the American soldier who then bound Atum. It was from this master that Atum came to Sergeant Devin Love.

Keep on the Shadowfell - Scorched Earth

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:41:58 GMT

The roof the roof the roof is on fire

The roof the roof the roof is on fire
The roof the roof the roof is on fire
We don't need no water let the mother*ucker burn
Burn mother*ucker burn

- traditional Skandik war chant

Our 4E group just wrapped up a chapter of the "Sven Chronicles" and I'll be DM'ing the next chapter. One of the players, Nate Marcel, is an artist who sometimes draws these great pictures of some of the ingame action. I was in another D&D campaign with him years ago and he actually drew a series of comic books based on our adventures, cool artifacts that I'll always treasure.

Anyway, the characters had just about had it with all the goblins in the dungeon. One of the player characters had died at their hands, along with a series of NPC "red shirts." Once the party succeeded finally in slaying the villainous traitor at the dungeon's heart, they piled all the furniture, crates, and torture chamber implements into the "rat hole" pit in the dungeon's first room, doused it with oil and set it alight.

This is the party grimly returning to their longship for further adventures. My character, Harek Bjornsson in the foreground, broods over the men that were lost on this adventure. Nate's character, Vengarr, slings his battleax and considerable booty on his back. The "witch-men" from the south and west, Katsu and Anu bring up the rear.

Lazy Linking

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:19:56 GMT

Played a fun game of In a Wicked Age last weekend. The GM posted a few thoughts about the game at his blog here.

I played Jude, the rebel angel kid who'd been hanging around on earth in Manhattan since the early twentieth century. I pictured him and the rest of his gang wearing a variety of pieces of anachronistic clothing, topped off by Brooklyn Dodgers caps (the session was set in Hell's Kitchen in the '70s).

Jesse's Jack Lemmonesque-devil incarnate salesman was a lot of fun. One part sad sack and two parts SOB. I totally pictured The Smiling Man as being played by the actor who played "The Mayor" on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but even creepier.

I've enjoyed playing IAWA and it was nice to take it for a spin using one of the Oracles that wasn't Sword-and-Sorcery inspired (Demon City Blues), but I'm about ready to try something else.

Man on Wire

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:08:04 GMT

I saw a great, inspirational documentary Tuesday night: Man on Wire. It's about the French tightrope walker who crossed between the twin towers of the the WTC in 1974. Probably the best movie I saw this year.

Late last night my last and closest grandparent died quietly. My father having died eleven years ago, that leaves me as the last Gagan.

I feel a bit like a man on a wire today. Not in the "all things are possible if you just believe" sense. More in the "acutely aware of my mortality sense." Turning 40 and undergoing surgery in the last few months is definitely a factor.

It's okay. I just feel very present and also very humanly frail.

Alas, poor Sven! I knew him, Harek

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:49:12 GMT

The first session of the Wilderlands 4E campaign is in the books. Our party consists of Tekla, a flail-wielding Fighter, Anu, a Fey pact Warlock, Katsu, an Orb Wizard and my longship captain Harek. (I dislike the Warlord Class name)

We are outside the city of Ossary searching a dungeon beneath some ruins for a patricidal villain named Skili Nightchild. He is holed up somewhere in there with some goblins and has a bounty on his head which we aim to collect.

Our party had a fifth member named Sven. Given the template of a campaign based around a traveling longship with an "away team," I arrived at the concept of having a "red shield" join us. For ease of tracking and to build up an ongoing narrative of unlucky crewmates, Sven and future "red shields" have only one hit point (the Human Lackey minion from the Monster Manual). These guys are going to be hard to keep around. Over time I expect the crew members to arrive at the conclusion that serving under Harek is bad luck and that he is perhaps even cursed. Could be interesting.

Sven didn't make it. I was hoping he might survive a few sessions, developing a personality and a back story to give his passing more impact, but it was not to be; he stood in a bad spot and was attacked three or four times by goblin minions. The last one connected. His name provides the title to a record of what may be a long "Sven List." The ship is a half-day away and we will not return until we find Skili so Harek will either try to find a safe place for his body or build a small cairn for him and wish him a swift journey to Valhalla.

Sven did help us save one of the PC's lives before he went. He tied a rope to a pillar to allow Harek to descend safely into the pit Anu had fallen into (Katsu having just put the rat swarm in the bottom of the pit to sleep). We will definitely have to learn our own capabilities as well as those of our teammates. Anu desperately cast a spell at the rats in the hopes of getting lucky and taking them out. Their opportunity attack took him down and he was bleeding out. But he had earlier cursed a goblin that was almost dead. It dropped to Tekla's flail before the round was over. Had he been conscious, he could have used his Fey step power to simply teleport out of the pit to safety. But none of us knew that to be able to remind him. I expect a few such gaffes here in the early going. No harm done so far. Sven might disagree.

Impressions:

Fighters kick butt. They especially kick but with a Tactical Warlord around that has the Commander's Strike At-Will Power. Tekla was mowing through goblins like tall grass. My Warlord is fun to play so far. I have a giant copper d20 I hand over to Maizie (Tekla) for my Commander's Strike power. It's fun to narrate how Harek is shield-slamming or distracting the goblins to give Tekla an opening for further mayhem.

It might be hard in a dungeon to line things up for our wizard to pull off his area of effect attacks. It will take some practice and some delayed and readied actions for him to get a chance at taking out a couple minions at once. Tekla got a lot of mileage out of her Cleave attack; Katsu wasn't yet able cast Thunderwave without hitting one of us as well.

It's neat to not have to worry about casting/shooting past friendlies. That simple change makes a big difference for ranged attackers.

Diagonal movement always costing 1 feels is wonky but really opens up the battlefield and makes it easier to surround (or be surrounded by) opponents.

Runs of bad luck are scary and missing with Daily Powers could get a bit frustrating. (This was my fourth and fifth 4E skirmish, and I haven't landed a Daily Power yet). Our DM was hitting and rolling max or close to max damage pretty consistently and we were missing quite a bit. I think both of these encounters were supposed to be "warm ups" in terms of how difficult they were supposed to me, but they were both pretty hairy. Excitingly so.

Looking forward to the next session on Saturday. Overall, 4E is a lot of fun so far.

Winedark's Daughter

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:10:52 GMT

Winedark's Daughter is nearly 30 meters long. Each tree used in the construction of her keel and hull strakes was felled by Brand Hareksson's axe, whereupon it was soaked for sixty days in the semi-salt waters at Hroeven Fjord. The ribs were bent and shaped by Brand, Harek and a dozen Hroeven kinsmen from single young trunks of trees grown in the Grove of the One Tree on Croy. After one year of drying, she was sealed and then blessed by Hjalmr, a Skandik highpriest of Thor.

Her sail, of rough wool, has traditional Skandik red and white stripes, red for the color of the Winedark Sea, white for the color of the One Tree. The sail is adorned by the two opposed green seahorses of Clan Hroeven.

The proud dragon figurehead at her bow was covered with gilt, most of which has flaked away in recent years. The purpose of the figurehead is to ward off the terrible sea monsters reported to inhabit the waters near Brezal Isle.

Though she can sail with as many as 70 men, Winedark's Daughter is current crewed and provisioned for long journeys. There are forty crewmen, not counting Harek, Brand, and the other party members. Near the coastline or on rivers, thirty-two of the forty man her sixteen oars, each seated atop their sea chests. She could be crewed by as few as twenty (with sixteen rowers), but it would be slow going. Fully crewed as she is, and with a good wind, she can travel at better than 8 knots (9.3 miles/hour). Of the forty crew, twenty are Clan Hroeven huskarls, ten are Skandik from other clans, and ten are Tharbrian mercenaries, some from Warwik. In poor weather or bad circumstance, some of these mercenaries refer to their boat as "Winedark's Whore, or "The Devil's Whore," usually out of earshot of her captain Harek.

Indulge me

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:13:22 GMT

It's my first dreaded, "Let me tell you about my character..." Only here you're not stuck in an elevator at a convention with me and you can just move along...

My friend Eric has moved back from NYC and has started up a 4E campaign. This makes it less likely I'll be returning to Dreamation (we'll see), but everything else about this development is awesome. The campaign is set in the Judges Guild classic Wilderlands.

From reading it and playing a few skirmishes, I've become a big fan of 4E D&D for reasons too numerous to, er, enumerate here. But D&D doesn't have many (any?) mechanical elements that support character-driven play. That pretty much all has to come from the DM and players and/or be hacked in. So naturally I've spend more time thinking about character background and motivations for this game than for any other recently. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense to me either. Eric has some exposure to Burning Wheel's "BITs" as well as lots of cool Mearls' and Laws' game theory, so I expect some of this stuff will end up hitting the table in some fashion.

I've been itching to make a Viking character since I started lusting after this bad boy over a year ago, and Wilderlands has "Vikings-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off" in the form of "Skandiks." Here's Harek:

Harek Bjornsson is the chieftain of of Clan Hroeven, a Skandik clan unusual in that it has kin and dwellings on both Croy and Brezal Isle with about half the clan in Croy proper and half in a fishing village on the southern coast of Brezal. It may be for this reason that their insignia is of two green seahorses facing one another as across the strait which separates the two Skandik islands.

Harek's clan is not wealthy or significant enough for him to be a true Jarl, but there are almost two-hundred of them between the two islands including woman and children. Their warriors are considered to be among the bravest and Harek has the reputation as a clever, though sometimes obstinate leader. As a younger man, Harek studied in the libraries on Croy at the Shrine of the Tree as an acolyte of Wotan (Odin) . Though he maintained all required observances to Wotan, he inclined toward war histories and tactical studies rather than religious texts. When his elder brother died he left the shrine to assume the leadership of his clan, but he still remains friendly with the priesthood and the Oracle there.

Harek has two brothers and three sisters still living. While he is at sea, raiding, questing or at war, Harek's brother Hundr is the nominal head of the land bound clan members. As is customary for a Skandik chieftain, Harek is polygamous and has had four wives in his years, as many as three at a time. He has but one wife remaining. His first and favorite wife, Tora, mother to his eldest son Brand, died recently under circumstances both he and Brand are reluctant to speak of. His remaining wife, Aesa, is many years his junior and still of child-bearing years. Harek has five sons and six daughters ranging from ages three to thirty (Brand).

Harek is wealthy enough to have both a longsword and a suit of chain mail. The family chain mail, Jokulsnautr (Jokull's Gift), he has already passed on to Brand, preferring the lighter hide armor he wears. The family sword, Tyrfingr (Tyr's Finger), he still wields, though he also has a great maul he sometimes puts to brutal use.

Harek's recent concern is in seeing that Brezal Isle does not attack Croy. Though Clan Hroeven is loyal to the Warlord Alkazed at Ossary and has provided ships, arms, and men at his bidding, he does not believe Croy should be brought under the influence of Brezal and Ossary through force of arms. In addition to his concern for the Hroeven kinsmen who would be caught up in the fight on either side, Harek believes Croy is a holy place under the protection of Wotan and that the All-Father would be displeased to see Skandiks fighting one another overly when there is better prey to be found against the Overlord and others.

Harek has recently become obsessed with finding the legendary "Haeringr's Helm" (Helm of Heroes), which he believes would be vital in extending the influence and reputation of Clan Hroeven, perhaps making it possible for he or one of his sons to become a Jarl, or even King.

It is late spring and Harek Bjornsson has set out to look for Haeringr's Helm once again, his son Brand with him. The huskarls aboard his longship, Winedark's Daughter, have planted their crops and will not return until the fall to harvest them and then homestead through the winter. This season his ship is crewed in part by Tharbrian mercenaries, hungry more for coin than glory; some raiding may be in order. With him also are two non-Skandik allies, a warlock and a wizard, drawn to Croy (called also the Seat of Sages and Scholar's Retreat). He hopes they will be of aid to him in his quest, though it is clear they have their own purposes and may exact a price.

Geiger Counter

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 02:46:48 GMT

The Rig

A Senator and two campaign staffers on their way to an aircraft carrier photo op are forced by a helicopter fuel leak to land on a old oil rig which has been retrofitted for black ops marine genetics experiments. A storm strands them there. Murder and mayhem ensue.

Cast: Sen. Ben Templeton - heroic politician; Dr. Emily Smith - murderous geneticist; Father Simon Rushim - zealous facility chaplain; Loretta Hamil - crazy medium; Beth Haughten - wealthy socialite; Gilroy X - facility commando.

I'd been looking for something to take to a local game shop's beer and pizza night, something that would be relatively easy to pick up and teach, and Geiger Counter looked like it might fit the bill. A lot of the goplaypdx crew were either late or didn't make it but we roped in three people who hadn't played a game like it before and played an abbreviated session. We knew up front that some folks would have to leave early and we were forced to rush some things so I can't say that every aspect of the game got a proper showing. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, though; they all planned to grab it off the website and one of them intends to facilitate it himself some time soon.

I'd recommended in another thread a bullet point teaching aid for people planning to moderate a game for their first time, but in practice I found it pretty easy to flip through the document and cover each of the important points. I had Christian (xenopulse) who'd played it at GoPlayNW to help me along too.

We brainstormed eight goals for our setting and then chose six (one each) from among those and did the same for character concepts. That seemed to work pretty well, although if I were taking this to a con or to a future game night, I would appreciate the opportunity to whittle down the time on this by having five style sheets that had ten goals and ten character concepts already prepared with players picking from among those or making up their own as desired. I'll bet these kinds of movies can be collected into only a handful of boilerplates.

All the new people really warmed to their roles as directors and did a great job. It reminded me of PTA in terms of how quickly people fall into a mode of scene-framing in an RPG if the instructions for it are presented in terms of cinema.

Knowing we were pressed for time, we built up the Menace quickly (for the record: Fast, Strong, Hazardous Environment, Tentacles, Enemy Commandos, Relationship with Scientists, Impervious to Firearms, Flooding), and the pacing definitely suffered for that. We didn't get enough opportunities to develop our characters, so the goal fulfillments felt a little rushed as well.

As a data point, we all died. I had emphasized the core of the game being to try to arrive at a point where most of us died but that one or two of us survived and I don't think we engaged much in those behaviors that reduced character survivability. There was exactly one die-rolling confrontation between characters and we didn't have the Menace attack any main characters until it had five dice. After it peaked at eight dice we immediately succeeded in fulfilling two goals to bring it down to 6 dice and then another in the following scene to bring it to five. Still, it wiped us all out and probably could probably taken out a couple more of us given the chance. We did have a "traitor" that sided with the Menace so that was part of it. I wouldn't choose to restrict the number of Traitors but I could see some this getting pretty ugly if there were even two of them w/o some mitigating mechanical help for prospective survivors.

Highlights:

- a great prelude with blinking monitoring stations and a lush underwater biosphere.
- great camerawork all around with cool descriptions of the storm and water on the lenses.
- the inadequately pinioned helicopter is blown off the helipad and crashes though the plateglass windows of the mess hall below, hanging from cables.
- Father Simon and his "knife-in-a-hollowed-out-bible" ruse.
- the naïve medium Loretta attempts to empathize with the aquatic menace with predictable results.
- the scientist "mother" of the menace scolds her "child" to try to get it to behave.
- moments after promising to leave his wife and make his mistress an honest woman, action-hero Ben inadvertently torches both her and the menace with highly-oxygenated fire from the tanks in the medical facility.

Our abbreviated and rushed session makes me hesitate to make too many playtester observations, but I would try to answer any questions that come to mind. I did have a good time with this game and hope I can play it again soon. It gave me an opportunity to meet some neat new people and introduce them to a shared-authority gamestyle they weren't familiar with. I own a lot of the IPR catalogue and there are only a few games I would feel so comfortable running for new people so quickly (PTA and Contenders among them). And Geiger Counter was free!

(cross-posted at Story Games)

Lazy Days of Summer

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:05:27 GMT

I've been doing more gaming, reading game books and posting on the internet here and there, but neglecting this blog. The backlog of posts I'd intended to write is pretty staggering. I'll instead record a brief overview of my recent gaming.

I've played a little 4E D&D and have spent a lot of time recently creating maps, counters, and NPC opponents in anticipation of running a campaign and/or some more one-shots of it sometime in the future. Except for a brief stint of painting miniatures a few years ago, I've never really been the crafty type. I'm actually having a lot of fun making counters using 1" wooden discs, artwork found on the internet, and a circular craft punch. For maps, I've found some online tools and I'm slowly gaining proficiency in Photoshop to that end.

Except for Mearls' Iron Heroes and to a lesser extent, Guardians of Order's A Game of Thrones, I've never had much enthusiasm for D&D. I played a little bit of 1st edition, (prefering The Fantasy Trip), never played 2nd edition, and while I played a fair amount of 3rd edition, I had fun with it in spite of the system owing most of my enjoyment to the people I was playing with. I still prefer other games, but with 4th edition my interest in playing D&D has been renewed. It strikes me as being really well-designed for the kind of game it is trying to be.

I suspect that part of it is that my brain is again ready for the kind of tactical play that D&D excels at. Most of my boardgaming in the last few years has moved away from the heavy "gamer's games" like Die Macher and Caylus and towards the lighter family-fare games like Ticket to Ride and Around The World in 80 Days. At the same time, I've been getting more story and character-focused role-playing in. Not feeling the need to have that itch scratched by D&D, I'm ready to break out the miniatures and count squares and such.

I wrapped up the FATE campaign I'd been running. I'd call it a mix of success and missed opportunities. I really like FATE and enjoyed the opportunity to run it for the group I did, but I feel like my inexperience with running it, some scheduling difficulties, and the game being new to the group contributed to the experience being less than what it might have been. I'd definitely do some things differently next time. I hope to find time to write a more detailed post about what I learned from running FATE while some of those lessons are still fresh. One of the things I enjoyed most was learning more about Egypt and Egyptian mythology in the course of preparing for the sessions. Most of my research was completely unnecessary and didn't make its way into the game, but it was a good excuse to put off actual game preparation in the interest of expanding my knowledge of an absolutely fascinating and alien culture.

I have been working on a couple different FATE-hacks off and on and continue to do so in an unfocussed manner. One is a Norse-themed game and the other is a FATE conversion for playing in the world of Robert E. Howard's Conan: Hyboria. I've come up with some mechanics I think are really promising but possibly a little "busy" for FATE. I may make some of my design work public when it's not quite so rough.

The Friday group I played FATE with has started up as Star Wars Saga Edition game and we've played two sessions of that so far. I really like my character. I'm playing a twenty-something female Jedi named Mira Kwai who was a padawan of Mace Windu. As the campaign begins, Mace Windu (Samuel L. mother-f*@&in' Jackson) has just been knocked out of a window and the Great Jedi Purge has begun. My character is based off a latina gangbanger character named Dizzy Cordova from the 100 Bullets comic. In this incarnation as Mira, she grew up in a gang in the rough-and-tumble "Sector 10" of Coruscant and was being weaned from the streets by Mace before he was killed. She's as much scoundrel as Jedi and will probably make some very bad choices before all is said and done. Her lightsabre, of course, is green. Should be fun.

The group I play with on Sundays has been playing Vincent Baker's In a Wicked Age for a couple months and we had an especially good session last night. The game has some mechanics that I never quite "got," but the resulting play has been very enjoyable. In its current form, I think it wants a rewrite, but it's an inexpensive game that I can recommend checking out to almost anyone. I'd played it as a one-shot before our recent ongoing game and that was okay, but it's been great seeing elements and characters from earlier sessions re-incorporated into the story.

After we finish up In a Wicked Age, the Sunday group is going to play Sorcerer next. I've wanted to play this game since my Dictionary of Mu game at Dreamation '07 and now I'll get the opportunity to play it as more than a one-shot convention game. We've determined the game is going to be set in at Berkeley in 1968. My brain is virtually exploding with character and situation possibilities; it will take considerable willpower to settle on one of them. One of the ideas has my character involved peripherally in the assassination of RFK, another with binding the unwilling spirit of the recently deceased Neal Cassady. Really looking forward to this.

That's probably enough for now. Returning to stasis mode...

Impossible Ghost Palm!

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 03:13:27 GMT

From famine to feast, I played three role-playing games in the last week. Last Monday I played part one of what will likely be a two or three-part game of an Iron Fist Kung Fu Tournament set in Ed Brubaker & Matt Fraction’s latest incarnation of said martial arts hero.

Jake is running the game using a mash up of his Panty Explosion and Classroom Deathmatch games.As with the comic, the intent is to intersperse kung-fu matches with scenes of intrigue, politics, and romance. Brubaker and Fraction are re-writing the mythos behind the Daniel Rand Iron Fist character and have gone back into the history of the characters who formerly held the mantel of the Iron Fist, including a cool pulp era manifestation in the person of Orson Randall, who uses Gun-fu (I think I’d prefer a monthly series set in the early 30s about Orson to the modern one about Daniel).

We’d decided to set our tournament in the 1850s, when the Iron Fist was Bei Bang-Wen, so I did a little research about

China

in the 1850s. I know almost nothing about Chinese history. My browsing eventually brought me to the Taiping Rebellion.

Hong Xiuquan, leader of the Tiaping rebellion and the self-proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ. Wow. A common theme/impression I’ve held/noticed lately is that real-world history is at least as interesting as any fantasy world we role-players typically choose to play in. I’ve actually felt this for a long time, but it’s been hammered home recently with Grey Ranks, the Egyptian history research I’d done for my FATE Game, and the “No Man’s Land WWI game I’m playing in.

After reading about Hong Xiuquan, I knew he had to be a part of the assembly and intrigue in our 1850s tournament. We got a late start and did not get to play long, but he and the Taiping Rebellion are somehow mixed up with the “Immortal Weapon” character I am playing, Xue-mei Quan, Mistress of Crows, champion of Yue-han, City of the Shrouded Moon.

Xue-mei lost her first bout to Daminsuryn, the Mongolian Scorpion Khan of Xiadu, but I am more interested in having her “win” the interstitial scenes we are playing.

Each of us have cool kung-fu moves we determined. Xue-mei’s are Ruinous Crow Onslaught, Poetic Moon Rebuke, and Impossible Ghost Palm. I haven’t played the standard Panty Explosion game, (I don’t know much about the genre it is best suited to emulate), but it was neat to have different people narrating our success or failure and I like the mechanics I’ve seen so far.

More about my other recent games to follow. Hopefully.

Twisting FATE

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:19:49 GMT

Though we created the world and character's long ago, and while I've had some playtests and combat runs, my FATE mini -campaign formally begins next weekend.

I've put off much of the prep for it and still have a lot of things in the form of crazy, random notes to throw up on the wiki I created for the game. Some of it I plan still to do, and some things I really need to "get down on paper" for the benefit of the players who are new to this system, but I've also decided I want to wing a lot of the game. Particularly after reading Graham Walmsley's Play Unsafe, I've determined that game prep feels too much like work for me. I want to go into the first session with just a list of NPCs, a reference of the PC's Aspects, a strong idea of the game's tone, but only a vague idea of what might occur in-game.

In my combat playtests I was somewhat dissatisfied with how easily the heroic characters could get at my dastardly villain(s) which lurked behind their minions. Minions are not very effective at setting Blocks (a kind of Action) to prevent this. This is okay, but felt a bit off when the imagined space of "Zones" was a hallway, and there were a dozen foot soldiers in front of a wicked fire sorcerer.

I created a new special Action which is a hybrid of two of the actions already present in Spirit of the Century, the "Full Defense", and the "Block."

Protect

"Keep them back, you fools!"

A group of minions or a character with attached minions may take this action with the following effect: they forgo their normal action but gain a +1 on all their reactions and defenses for that exchange. They may also designate one side (border) of the Zone they inhabit as "Protected." Opponents may not take a supplemental action to cross that side of the Zone to the adjacent Zone, and the value of that Protected border is increased by an amount equal to the minion bonus commensurate with the size of the group. (e.g. two or three minions: +1, four to six minions: +2, and so on).

Narratively, the group may be surrounding their opponents, forming a shield wall, or otherwise interposing themselves between their master and their foes. Note that it is still possible, using a sprint action, for opponents to get past this improved barrier. Depending on the nature of the minions and the terrain, the border may also be inoperative against some forms of mobility (flight or similar).

I anticipate some new Leadership Stunts which would make this action more effective.

Dreamation 2008 - Overview

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:17:15 GMT

With further thoughts about my PTA game unrecorded, and with drafts of actual play reports from Dreamation '07 still unfinished (!), I'll offer only an overview of my experience at Dreamation '08 last weekend.

Having spent the prior week walking around Manhattan and hanging out with a friend, I was already pretty tired as the convention got underway. I overslept on Saturday and missed an opportunity at a Swansong game run by Clinton R. Nixon which had a couple players I'd played with last year and with whom I really wanted to play again. And then I opted out of the midnight Dirty Secrets game I'd also been looking forward to.

Still, including four playtests, I played in seven games: Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, Grey Ranks, Kingdom of Nothing, Criminal Element, Giants, Burning Wheel, and In a Wicked Age. Each of the games was run by their creators, excepting the IAWA game which I understood was being developed as a post-apocalyptic setting hack for that game, a "Project Bearclaw." I might have this wrong; I was checking out of my room and arrived at that game a bit late Sunday morning.

The S7S game had too many players in it (seven) for me to really get a good sense of the system. By the time we got an overview of the world and had created characters we only had one or two opportunities for each of our characters to interact with the mechanics.

Kingdom of Nothing was just a game concept at the Dreamation designer panel last year. All the characters in Kingdom of Nothing are homeless street people who've lost their past. It's got a Gaiman/World of Darkness vibe that takes some inspiration from Don't Rest Your Head. I played a sixty-something scrap-metal-collecting alcoholic named "Rattle" that was inspired by "Bubs" from The Wire. It was really cool to see how much work its creator had put into it since the panel and he was really open to all of the playtesters thoughts on where it might need some work. Based on his latest playtests, it looks like Jeff is going to tweak quite a few things, including stripping out entire subsystems of the game.

Both Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies and Kingdom of Nothing show a lot of promise. I really like what I've seen of their settings and look forward to their completion.

Criminal Element and Giants were two other playtests I participated in. Both of these seemed closer to finished and I would be surprised if they weren't available next GenCon.

Like the S7S playtest, Criminal Element might have benefited from one less person; after character and situation creation we again only had time for a very short scenario. Criminal Element allows you to play characters in a heist film like Reservoir Dogs or Heat. I had browsed a draft of the rules several weeks before, and had even contemplated running a game of it before I ultimately decided I wouldn't be running anything at Dreamation. I played a larger-than-life wheelman named Parker inspired by one of the characters from the Jock/Diggle comic book, The Losers. As in all heist films, things quickly went pear-shaped for our group. Despite the abbreviated scenario, everyone seemed to have a good time - lots of laughs all around. I *really* like the Blackjack inspired conflict resolution mechanic in this game - it is very fast, yet still has interesting risk/reward decisions and tension and matches the genre perfectly. When it comes out, I expect to add this game to a stable of low/no prep games that I can have ready to run at any time along with Dust Devils, PTA, Contenders, Don't Rest Your Head, and maybe In a Wicked Age.

Giants might be another such game; the group collaboratively creates the situation they will play in together right before play. Using pre-generated characters each of us named and added our giant character's community and other towns and geographical features to a blank map. We then proceeded to stride across our new-sprung land, engaging in titanic struggles against an enigmatic foe known as Firebringer. I enjoyed this game for the opportunity to play with Shane Jackson again (he was in three of my games last year), as well as to play with Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue of Evil Hat, two of the three designers of my favorite game. I met them last year but didn’t have the chance to play with them. It was fun creating a map together, each of the players playing off of and adding to what the others had contributed. Afterwards, I had a few ideas about some possible tweaks for the game, but preferred to listen to the geniuses of FATE offer their suggestions. (Man, those guys can talk!)

The two heart-wrenching games of the convention were Grey Ranks and Burning Wheel.

Of all the games I’d signed up for, I was most anticipating the Grey Ranks session. Follow the link for more information about it; I won’t dwell on the game much here. I expect to find a way to play a three session arc of it sometime this year and post more about the game then. It was extremely cool, but I especially felt the “pang of the one-shot” with this game. By that I mean I’ve really begin to realize how much I prefer a game that goes for three or more sessions. There was so much more to explore in the amazing characters and situation the players and the game system afforded, but no time or opportunity to do it. The Polish child soldiers, Bear, Slaz, Mar, and the rest are lost portraits, frozen in time. This was my favorite session of the convention as well as the session that makes me think conventions might not be for me. I went to Dreamation last year and this year because I’ve had so few opportunities to play these small press games at all, much less on a regular basis. I’m hoping this is starting to turn around with the development of the community of indie gamers here in Portland.

The Burning Wheel scenario, The Sacrifice, was equally poignant. Each of the pre-generated characters’ beliefs is at odds such that a tragic end is almost inevitable. I was glad for the opportunity to finally play Burning Wheel, one of the first small press games I ever purchased, but knew (and still know) that it’s not a system for me. It just has too much “crunch” for my present tastes. Its author, Luke Crane, is an energetic and talented game master who really projects his enthusiasm for his game and the hobby. He went right for our characters’ hearts and throats and made us like it.

The Sunday morning game, In a Wicked Age/Project Bearclaw, was a little stilted and meandering. We had rules questions and confusions. I’ve read the rules three times and played it once and am still not quite sure how to play the thing. The situation creating “Oracle” and the resolution mechanic at its heart are appealing enough for me to keep at it. It could end up being an absolutely great game for me. I think I’ll need to un-train myself from some of the stakes-setting instincts I’ve learned from similar games to play it correctly.

Even though the game was really bumpy, good players still made it fun. John (jenskot) from the Mu game last year was there. All the characters in this post-apocalyptic setting were interesting/funny. I played a simple farmer named Loam Tilman with John played my blindly optimistic wife Emma, and Rob Donoghue playing a hard-nosed tin mine manager. Kevin Allen Jr.’s accent and mannerisms for his collector/merchant character, Barnigut, had me in stitches, and there was a feckless charlatan inventor named Mr. Volts who somehow made good on his promises of creating a rain machine in the end.

So, I’m still not sure about conventions generally but this one has lots of neat people and talented role-players who are really bringing special qualities when they sit down to play. At least as long as I have my good friend Eric in Manhattan, I don’t intend to miss out on Dreamation.

No Man's Land

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:30:21 GMT

Christian wrote up an actual play vignette of the initial session and put together a wiki for the Primetime Adventures show we started up last weekend: No Man's Land.

I'll probably post the majority of my thoughts on the game elsewhere but I wanted to make a few comments about it and put down the links here for reference.

Per the ad copy, Primetime Adventures is a role-playing game where you "Play the greatest TV show that never was!" I didn't have or watch much TV for most of the '80s and '90s. While I recognized there was some good content, I mostly thought of it as an idiot box. In the last few years, I've altered my opinion. I really appreciate the writing on several shows, both dramas and comedies, as well as the rich characterization that the ongoing serialized form allows. Some of my favorite shows include Firefly, Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars, Rome, and The Wire.

Primetime Adventures allows you to create and star in a TV show you'd enjoy watching. The game text and rules instruct you to frame scenes, build character arcs and explore issues in much the the way a good TV show would, right down to things like "camera work, " "budget," and "fan mail."

I have a thing for early 20th Century American history: WWI, The Progressive Era, Prohibition, the Depression, and had suggested the possibility of a show set sometime in that time period which was influenced by the feel of the show Carnivale, a show I really liked, (before it was canceled), and which I knew also appealed to Christian. Colin hadn't seen Carnivale but wanted some kind of supernatural element and suggested a show "kind of like Lost, only with a plot that goes somewhere." He pitched a WWI show with rat-infested trenches and artillery bombardments where no-man's land is divorced from reality somewhat like in a Russian science fiction novel he'd recently read. Everyone liked this idea and "No Man's Land" was born.

While Carnivale and Lost might be the primary influences, I expect the show might also also be influenced by Gallipoli, Weird War Tales, Hellboy, The English Patient, King of Hearts, and Johnny Got His Gun. Those will be things in the back of my mind, at least. Everyone will bring their own influences to the table, and I'm looking forward to seeing what we create together.

No Compass For Me

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 00:41:18 GMT

In spite of the stellar cast, I decided ultimately not to see The Golden Compass. As with The Chronicles of Narnia, I decided I prefer the pictures I formed in my head to someone else's interpretation. I'd also read they really made a lot of compromises with the script with regard to some of the controversial themes in the books. I am curious how Iorek turned out. Just not curious enough...

A New Year

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:42:05 GMT

Well, it's clear I'm not much of blogger. I have no intent to measure my performance against my gaming resolutions of last year. I fell so far short on most of them that it's laughable. This was the busiest year of my career; I did much less gaming than I'd hoped for, and even less blogging.

I thought I'd mention a couple of things anyway, things I did that I enjoyed and things I'm looking forward to. I may or may not maintain this blog periodically. We'll see.

I ran a Dust Devils game earlier last fall that I had a lot of fun with. The game started late and didn't go as long as I might have hoped, but I think it was good while it lasted and I enjoyed the resolution mechanics quite a bit. I'd like to run it again some day.

When I've had time, I've pitched a lot of different games to different groups of people and have had little success - it's really hard to get enough people who have similar interests in roleplaying and then to get them to commit to a game. Everyone is so varied in their gaming tastes and everyone has busy schedules and other priorities.

Last weekend I hosted a Primetime Adventures game at my house, with Christian producing and me, Dave, and Colin as players. I'll provide some links to an actual play post and the wiki that Christian is throwing together for the game when they're available. The most exciting development is that we've agreed to play a five episode "season" of PTA, with four more sessions played once every two to four weeks. Except for the Middle Earth game I've played in (and the Game of Thrones game before that), all of the roleplaying I've been able to fit in this year has been "one-shots," which I've enjoyed but isn't my preference. I really prefer the character and plot development that multiple sessions allow.

Starting sometime in February, I'll be GM'ing a FATE mini-campaign for probably seven sessions. We've had the characters done for quite a while and I've done some playtesting and one-offs in the setting we created together, but this will be the actual beginning of the formal campaign. I have more content than I've found time to add, but I put together a wiki for the campaign here.

In two and a half weeks I'll be flying east to visit Dreamation again. I had such a good time last year, and though I've not found time to post the actual play from all those sessions as I'd intended, I look forward to some great gaming and to visit with some of the people I met there.

Laughed at me... said I was Mad!

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 20:36:59 GMT

Puny mortals! You'll all pay!

check the Metahuman Activity Map

Nemomeme

SoonIWillBeInvincible.com

Story Now as Axiom

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 20:07:25 GMT

So I'm cycling along a country road in Bavaria at twilight. A light rain and breeze touch my face. Cornfields and small farms surround me. I see the Alps on the horizon. My ipod streams Elliott Smith into my ears. I'm far from home and haven't seen anyone I know well for over a month. I miss Jen tremendously.

I am seized by a vague sense of being a protagonist in a montage in a Wes Anderson film. Ridiculous and full of contradictions, but ultimately sympathetic.

I rarely feel like this, and it is only fleeting. It feels like I'm on a precipice of understanding something important and that I'll be changed by new knowledge.

And that the "Story" of my life will shift in some thematically important way from the third-person omniscient.

This is something I want from role-playing that I sometimes get, and which is one of the things which keeps me returning to it - a sense of story and direction for a character which I have some measure of control over. Unlike viewing finished creations in mediums like fiction, painting, music, or cinema.

I have this sense that life should be more like a story more often. And role-play, along with being engaging and escapist entertainment, is my half-mad attempt at addressing this unfortunate flaw.

The Golden Compass

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:36:22 GMT

This was off my compass until just now.

I completely had Nicole Kidman (I think because of "To Die For") in my head for Mrs. Coulter when reading the book, and I pretty much had Sam Elliot in my head for Lee Scoresby. Great casting. And we'll get to see what else Daniel Craig can do.

I'm uncharacteristically excited about this adapation. I hope it doesn't stink. And I hope digital Iorek looks a little better in the final reels.

I like my daemon. What's yours?

The Ennies

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 20:39:10 GMT

So while I've been enjoying and partaking of the EN World site for, well, all of this millennium at least, I didn't vote in the Ennies until last year. I felt strongly that the Guardians of Order deserved recognition, even as they went out of business, for what I felt was one of the best RPG products ever made: The Game of Thrones RPG.

This year, I feel compelled to vote again and to encourage others to do the same, as there are two wonderful podcasts, and two game products that have provided me a huge amount of entertainment over the past year, and which I feel are of similar quality.

Best Podcast (first time category): Sons of Kryos or Have Games, Will Travel. If you aren't listening to these, (I enjoy and listen to all of the nominees here), you're missing out on some great material to improve your gaming life. I voted for the one I don't (can't) subscribe to with token financial support. Both are beyond worthy. Even if you don't get around to voting in the Ennies, reward yourself by listening in to Jeff, Judd, and Storn (SoK) and Paul (HG,WT).

Best Writing: Dictionary of Mu. My best single role-playing session in the last year was set in this game's world and run by it's author, Judd Karlman. I'd owned the game for a couple months prior, but had only browsed through it. After my Mu session at Dreamation, I dug into it voraciously. The writing really is great. It's sublime, accessible poetry. Beyond that, it's provided me a wealth of ideas for the feel (and some elements), of the FATE campaign I've been working on here and there.

I actually own and have read each of the nominees in this category save one. They're all good stuff, but Mu is Khan. It's up for Product of the Year and gets my nod there as well.

Best Rules: This was easy for me. FATE is my favorite RPG system. Spirit of the Century represents the latest refinement of that rules system in Pulp form. The rules are almost perfect for the game it is set in, but what really excites me about Spirit of the Century is what the "Aspects" part of its rules do for it. I find myself wanting to add Aspects to any number of other rules systems, and I've had great joy hacking SotC's rules for my own fantasy game.

It might sound strange to talk about hacking rules for a game that one is claiming has great rules, but that's all a part of the FATE/Fudge mystique. It has great templates, a framework that can be tweaked without easily breaking it, and a DIY community surrounding it. Spirit of the Century is one facet on a gem with a thousand sides, and it's a craftsman's cut.

Spirit of the Century has the best GM'ing/session planning advice I've read in any RPG tome in twenty-seven years of gaming. Period. I consider those as rules - rules too many RPGs leave out, but which Spirit thankfully did not.

***

Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Productions and IPR, along with some others in the small press gaming community are making a get out the vote push for indie games. I'm providing links for their ballot below. While I didn't vote a "party ticket," I think every product advocated is a contender worthy of consideration.

I like the idea of some of these creator-owned products making a splash in an award context, leading to potentially greater sales, leading to a larger community from which great new designs, mechanics, and forms of play can spring. Which I can then further enjoy. This is a great time to be a gamer. The Ennies nominees this year really reflect that. Too bad my wallet reflects it as well.

Speaking of which, If anyone has $125.00 lying around, feel free to send it my way. The Deluxe Galleon nominee for Best Miniature Product is calling to me. Arrr!!! Now go vote, mateys, or walk the plank!

I am a summer hero! And you can be too!

The 2007 Ennies votes are happening, and the small press games that are up for awards need your help. If you’re a fan of Spirit of the Century, Burning Empires, Lacuna, Dictionary of Mu, Dawning Star: Helios Rising, Faery’s Tale, or Hollow Earth Expedition, this is a chance for you to stand up like me and make a difference. The voting is happening starting July 16th over at the Ennie Awards site and lasts only two weeks. There’s no better time to cast your vote than today!

You find a sample ballot here: Grab a Sample Ballot
And you can place your votes here during the voting period starting on July 16th: The Ennie Awards Voting Site

Together we can be heard. Become a Summer Hero. Cast your vote, and let other people know how to become heroes themselves!

Find out how to put this message in your own blog!

Mama Said Knock You Out

Thu, 17 May 2007 06:50:03 GMT

You're the fighter you've got the fire
The spirit of a warrior, the champion's heart
You fight for your life because the fighter never quits
You make the most of the hand you're dealt
Because the quitter never wins

- The Warrior’s Code, Dropkick Murphys

I've been neglecting my blog, but played a game last weekend that demands a play report: Contenders.

Jake hosted another Go Play SE Portland event for more than a dozen people associated with Portland Indie Games, and I moderated this GM-less role-playing game for Jake, Christian, and Nick.

Contenders bills itself as “a role-playing game of blood & sweat, pain and hope.” It’s a game where each of the players plays down on their luck boxers trying to escape from the gutter. I think there are some mechanical issues with the game, some of which I could see coming before play, but it really delivers an experience true to the genre it's emulating, along with a great time. It's a game I've really looked forward to playing. It works fine for a one-shot (five hours), but I think it wants a slower build-up; I'd prefer to spend two or three sessions with it if I get to play it again.

You can pick any setting you want for your boxers. We arrived at January, 1931 in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. There's snow and sometimes blood on the ground. Prohibition, labor agitation, organized crime, redemption, and romance were also a part of our backdrop. And of course pain and hope.

Characters:

Jake - "Big" Leroy Biggles: The big man from back West (Oregon) who learned boxing in the Army and has come to the Big Apple to make his fortune. He's earnest and good-intentioned, but not above getting dirty in the ring if that's what it takes to win his old flame, Jill Jameson back. Jill's currently engaged to Boris' trainer Henry Lovitt. She has a young boy named Frankie who's got Leroy's eyes. Leroy isn't certain that Frankie is his son. Whatever the case, Jill seems to have moved on and is looking for a more reliable provider for Frankie. Leroy's great hope is to prove himself to Jill before she marries Henry.

Nick - Halim "Lincoln Washington" Jubar - An Iranian immigrant who grew up in privilege but disappointed his parents by coming to America and putting on boxing gloves. Taken with the culture and history of his adopted home, he intended to go by the All-American name of Lincoln Washington in the ring, but was quickly typecast as a Persian villain. His parents have cut him off financially. Unless he can prove himself worthy, he risks deportation and then execution back home.

Christian - Boris "The Brute" Kachalovsky – son of a staunch Socialist worker, Boris’ family immigrated from a Jewish community in Western Russia to the states when he was a little boy. Both his parents are desperately poor, and Boris earns money for his family by boxing because his father’s reputation makes it impossible for him to get a factory job. His sister Alena is an active Socialist and is in danger because of it. She’s borrowed money from loan sharks to support the cause. Boris has secretly taken on anti-union tasks (scaring and roughing up unionists), but feels conflicted and guilty about it.

Me - "Fearless" Finian Walsh – Son of an Irish longshoreman, Doyle Walsh, Finian grew up hard of the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. He’s hired out as muscle to a local gang boss now and then, primarily for protection rackets, but doesn’t relish the work. He just needs enough set up his younger brother Rory for college. He’s seen Rory hanging around Murphy’s pool hall lately and that has him worried. Finian is also muscle for some of the longshoremen who are trying to unionize and who are being intimidated by anti-union thugs hired by Robert Evans, a wealthy importer.

I brought my ipod and portable speakers for the game, something which is becoming a favorite gaming accessory. I know there are times when music can be a distraction for some, but I like what the right music can add to a session or parts of a session and want to develop the uses for this tool further.

Of the background music options I suggested, (including no music whatsoever), we settled on having the 1920s playlist that I compiled for The Shab-al-Hiri Roach playing softly in the background for most of the time, with an anachronistic switch for boxing matches. I’d put together a short list of twelve songs found by searching “Boxing” on iTunes which included songs from various Rocky movies interspersed with some fairly rowdy fight-themed rap.

My other ever-present accessory was my case of poker chips. I’ve gained a fondness for poker chips since they were used heavily in an Iron Heroes game GM’d by a good friend a couple years back. I like poker chips for any game with currency that changes relatively rapidly or that might otherwise be forgotten, languishing unused on a character sheet.

In Contenders, “Cash” changes frequently – green chips, and a boxer’s In-Ring Traits change during and between each boxing round. We used white chips for “Technique,” red for “Power,” blue for “Cover,” and black for “Conditioning,” and this seemed to work out pretty well. Given that Contenders uses standard playing cards for scene and fight resolution, the poker chips seemed especially fitting.

Christian volunteered to start things off as Boris, choosing a “Work” Scene delivering some coats to the wealthy socialite, Jenny Franks, to earn some quick Cash.

A red Joker was drawn during this scene mandating that the following scene link with this first one in a positive light. Though we never drew another Joker outside the boxing ring for the rest of the night, we tried to connect the characters as often as we could. The players really worked toward this end, and Jake had a great idea to stop mid-session and talk about where the characters’ stories were and where they were likely headed. Some people are bothered by this kind of discussion, but I both find it helpful and enjoy it as an activity on its own.

I’ve allowed too much time to go by to be able to provide a blow-by-blow account of the game. I’ll simply detail some highlights and some impressions. Hoping other players will talk about their favorite aspects of the game in all the blank spaces.

Leroy had some great scenes with his former and future gal, Jill. I could just visualize him in the snow outside the tenement where Jill lived, begging for her to come out and “just give me a chance!” I played Jill and decided to keep my shoddy Irish accent thing going with her character as well as Finian’s. There’s just something about the Irish lilt that invites drama and pathos, hopefully even if it’s being slaughtered by an American tongue. There was a great scene early on where Jill, on Henry Lovitt’s arm, discovers Leroy washing dishes at the McGuiness diner. Leroy is somewhat embarrassed by the situation, but is serious in his efforts to prove that he can win her affections back and be a good provider and role-model. Jake and Nick had a nice scene as Leroy and Frankie, (father and son), down at the gym where Leroy trains.

Although Halim’s Connection was ostensibly his parents, they were established as being outside the country, and some unnamed representative of this family was determined to be his Connection. Because he lost his first couple of fights right out the gate and had a couple other scenes go poorly, I don’t think he ever visited his Connection to try to gain Hope. While Nick had some great NPC cameos, especially as Frankie and Alena, and seemed to have a good time narrating Halim’s hurricane fighting style, his boxer character seemed a bit isolated from the rest of the common story. I’m seeing this on reflection and feel badly that I didn’t do more to get Halim involved in what became the main storylines of the evening. Halim quickly got cast in a villain mold by his early Pain gains, his cheating in the ring, and his ethnicity within the context of the setting. I’m not sure that’s quite the direction Nick wanted, but he did seem to enjoy himself regardless,

Boris had some bad luck in early Connection Scenes and fights. In his first boxing match, he was ahead on points against Leroy, but then was narrowly knocked out. This put him on a path to Pain similar to Halim. Christian seemed to have a great time anyway whether as a boxing announcer, promoter, press agent, pawnshop weasel, Finian’s brother Rory, or wallowing in the doom of Boris himself. He, “Vic the Russian”, and several other anti-union thug types put my father and several of his longshoreman buddies in the hospital while Finian was out having coffee with Boris’ sister Alena. This put Finian and Boris on a collision course which built in an all out “Gangs of New York” style fight at Five Corners and then peaked in the ring at the sold-out venue of the New York Hippodrome. Boris’ brutal beatdown of the rising star, Finian, lost him his sister forever. A good thing for her as detailed here.

Finian never fought dirty, won his first couple fights, had no complications problem in any of the jobs he took, got his brother Rory to keep out of the Irish mob and hit the books, and found romance with Boris’ sister Alena. I enjoyed playing Finian, but would have like to seen a little more of a personal struggle on his road to triumph. I wonder how often the game system offers that. Two boxers got on a hard road and stayed there, whereas Leroy got mostly good news and Finian pretty much sailed though without a scratch until his final fight. (which I knew as a player that Finian needed to lose if he wanted to save the life of his woman) The players provided good opposition and struggle for all the boxers in our role-play but the cards didn’t always reflect that balancing act that seems to occur for boxing protagonists in the middle third of most movies of the genre. I came to the game prepared to weep at the trials I was sure to endure. Finian was livid when he discovered that Boris was behind his father’s beating and guilty at having not been there to defend him, but that was all apart from the games mechanics.

We got a lot of great play in five hours. There are a lot of characters, locations, scenes and themes I’ve not mentioned in this overview. I really like the structure of lots of different kinds of Scenes each with different, but still simple resolution mechanics associated with them. Having each Scene have a narrow goal aimed at improving a specific attribute of a character seems to help the “getting stuck” part I’ve occasionally encountered in the three other “GM-less” games I’ve played. But each scene is still really rich with possibilities within the constraints of the genre.

It may be an emerald the size of a boxer’s heart, but I view this game as an unpolished gem. I have a few concerns, but my main one is with the Pain attribute both in how quickly and how much it can outstrip the Hope attribute, and with what that does to a player who can see their boxer has no chance of having a positive outcome to their boxer’s story. Once they know their Hope will never equal their Pain, they have nothing to lose in “Bringing the Pain” in a boxing match. Two of the boxers had double-digit Pain in the course of one evening’s play, never mind a multi-session game. If they “Bring the Pain” against another boxer, they are going to knock out that boxer every single time, eliminating any of the tension that the early boxing matches had, and which is a big positive for the game while it’s present. If the other boxer brings the Pain in defense, he may survive if he’s got a good Pain rating, but the winner of that bloody bout *will* be eating the mat. We had three of our boxing matches end in first round knockouts that you could see coming a mile away. If I were to play this game again, I’d cap the amount of a boxer’s Pain that they could add to a Domination or Damage check to 6. Bringing the Pain would still be a significant factor, outstripping the tactical option chosen and likely of greater potency than the boxer’s In-Ring Traits, but not guaranteeing a knock-out. Cover seems to be a bit of a dump Trait as well – I might allow it to be trained concurrently with another Trait if the boxer has the Cash to pay for it. (A Scene spent training seems to be a more vital currency than the Cash spent while training, especially towards the mid and endgame). These are off-the-cuff thoughts that would need playtesting, obviously. I think the currency of the whole system could use a second look, maybe with built-in differences depending on whether a one-shot or multi-session game is planned.

Nothing in my comment above should dissuade anyone from giving this game a try as soon as they have the opportunity. This was one of the best times I’ve had role-playing in recent memory. Even if the mechanics don’t always parallel the genre emulation in every instance, the game text and basic drift of the rules do an absolutely terrific job of setting you up for great scenes that make you feel like you’re in a great movie. Players like Jake, Nick, and Christian don’t hurt either, that’s for sure. Thanks guys.

And the women and the money came fast and the days I lost track.
The women red, the money green, but the numbers were black.
I fought for the men in their silk suits to lay down their bets.
Well I took my good share, ma, I have no regrets.

- The Hitter, Bruce Springsteen

Maintenance

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 19:14:50 GMT

A two-week illness, followed by a two-week business trip to Germany (Bavaria), and a crushing workload have conspired to keep me from posting with my intended frequency. Things don't look much better on that front in the near future, but I thought I'd at least check in.

By now, I'd hoped to have written about:

Both my Polaris and Shock sessions at Dreamation.
The Shock: Social Science Fiction game I hosted on the 24th of February.
The final session of our Game of Thrones campaign.
Thoughts on the upcoming Gamestorm convention.
Notes on prep I'm doing for a mini-campaign using FATE.

These will be delayed at best and perhaps thrown under the bus of Too Many Things To Do. We'll see.

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Thing I'm worried about: whether or not I'm going to enjoy the 300 movie. Man, what a bunch of controversy it's generated on various RPG sites.

Thing I'm excited about: the Beast Hunters RPG preorder is up, looks beautiful, and I got playtesting credits. Yea!